Slanderella
by Lady Emily
Summary: Bailey confronts Cody after he makes some important revisions to his play. Spoilers for "The Play's The Thing." One-shot.


Disclaimer: I don't own Suite Life, _especially_ not the episode "The Play's The Thing," for which there are some minor spoilers.

A/N: I had so many problems with "The Play's The Thing" that I can't even start to list them. I was really hoping Cody would redeem himself by putting something nice into the end of his play but... that REALLY didn't happen. So I took a shot at making that cringeworthy episode slightly less horrible. See what you think!

* * *

"How could you do this to me?" Zack demanded. To his credit, he only faltered slightly as he continued, "I thought you loved me!"

Inches from his brother's face, Cody looked down at his high-heel-clad feet, staying conspicuously silent.

"Hayley?" Zack said in a pained voice.

Cody looked up. "I... thought I did. But if I loved you, would I have cheated on you?"

Despite being horrified by the assassination of her character, Bailey _seriously_ hoped Miss Tutweiller was giving Zack extra credit for this monstrosity of a school project: the play was bad enough without his leading lady being his brother dressed in drag. The poor boy looked like he wanted the stage to open up and swallow them both.

Most of the audience was hoping for the same thing.

"No, you wouldn't have." Zack said quietly.

Cody bit his lip, and Bailey frowned as she realized she was wearing the same expression. 'Hayley Chainlink' wasn't based on her, indeed! "I didn't... _mean_ to cheat on you. Brody, give me another chance. Please."

Bailey raised an eyebrow. She'd never seen this part of the play; she'd thrown away her script before she had a chance to read the end. But this was the closest 'Hayley' had come to acting like a decent human being over the entire course of the show.

"No." Zack said, turning away and placing his hand in his face. "No. I can't. I... want to. But it hurts too much."

"Brody..." Cody reached out and placed a hand on Zack's arm, and Zack smacked it away (with significantly more force, Bailey suspected, than was called for in the script.)

"Just go, Hayley." Zack whispered.

Biting back a theatrical sob, Cody complied, granting Zack (and the audience) some relief from the awkward sight of his skinny legs protruding from the pink evening dress. Bailey shook her head. It was a nice dress... shame Cody didn't have the figure for it. She smirked: Maybe she could ask him if she could borrow it to wear next time she had a _date_.

'Brody' placed his hands on the railing of the 'Arc de Triomphe,' closing his eyes and listening to Cody's receding (and wobbly) footsteps. He lowered his head. "How can it be," he questioned in an almost unheard whisper, "That after all that, _I still love you?_"

Snapped instantly out of her musings, Bailey almost fell off her chair.

The stage lights faded, and the few stubbornly polite audience members who'd made it to the end clapped weakly, likely more for the guts it took the actors to perform such a horrible play than for any enjoyment they'd garnered from it. There wasn't even time for the cast to take a bow before the Sky Deck was completely cleared... even Miss Tutweiller and Moseby had left. Only Bailey had remained, still shell-shocked by the last words of the play.

If Cody had written that terrible, insulting play to tell her he still loved her, that was the _worst possible way_ to do it.

But it still meant that he loved her.

"Bailey!" Zack grinned down at her as he and Woody began to take down the set. "What'd you think?"

Bailey's attention snapped to Zack. "Bravo! Bravo!" she cheered teasingly. "You're a better Cody than even Cody."

Zack shrugged with mock modesty. "I always have been."

"And you too, Woody." Bailey said. "Superb French accent."

Woody reddened, the blush spreading under his fake facial hair. "Oh, stop. You're too kind." He hefted the miniature French landmark and took it backstage.

"Zack, can you come here for a minute?" Bailey spoke up suddenly as Zack made to follow him.

Zack paused, sighed, and then returned, hopping off the raised stage and sitting beside her. "What's up?" he asked.

Now it was Bailey's turn to blush. "Zack... that last scene. Was... is Cody...?" she stammered, unable to finish the thought aloud.

Zack fiddled awkwardly with the tuxedo bow tie, finally getting the knot undone and stuffing the black strip of material into the jacket pocket. "Look, Bailey. Cody is... an idiot. And he's vindictive, and defensive, and he seemed way too comfortable in those pantyhose than any self-respecting man has a right to be, and... he might actually be losing his mind a little, but... he only did all this because he's unhappy. He misses you. Can't you just talk to him?"

Bailey clasped her fingers together, studying them with the same focus she'd use to study anything else. "I dunno, Zack. He slandered me in front of everyone."

"Let's be real: he also slandered himself, Pascal, mimes everywhere, and France as a country. Possibly even humanity itself."

Bailey laughed a little. "True. But the point was to slander me."

Zack was already getting up. "Talk to Cody."

Bailey sighed, sensing that she wasn't going to be getting any real help from Zack. "Where is he?"

"His cabin." Zack said with a satisfied smirk. "We all offered to finish cleaning up the stage in exchange for him getting out of that dress as soon as possible."

Bailey giggled. "You know, all things considered, he didn't look that bad."

"You're not the one who had to profess your love to him."

* * *

Bailey rapped gently on Cody and Woody's cabin door, listening as a series of bumps, shuffling, and finally a frustrated 'aw, screw it' came from within the room. Cody eventually poked his head out; mercifully, the wig was gone, and he'd managed to trade the heels and pantyhose for jeans and socks, but he was still wearing the dress.

"Language like that is not very ladylike." Bailey tutted.

Cody glared at her briefly before his curiosity got the best of him. "What are you doing here? Come to yell at me some more?"

Bailey folded her arms. "If I did, you would deserve it." she said dryly. "But I just came to talk."

"About the play?" Cody asked hesitantly.

"Yes." Bailey answered, looking up at him. It was hard to keep her eyes from straying to the barrette holding his bangs back... and somehow, even harder to stop herself from checking out his chest. "But... you should finish getting changed first. I can't talk to you like this." Like a smoldering train wreck, his attire was so disturbing that she couldn't look away.

Cody's features were caught between a blush and a grimace. "I... I can't reach the zipper." he admitted finally.

If she hadn't been so mad about the play, and so confused about her feelings for him, Bailey would have burst out laughing. "You... you can't..." she repeated in a strangled voice. Finally she located a spark of empathy within herself and took pity on him. "Come on," she said, ushering him back into the room. "I'll help you." She closed the door behind her before issuing one last jibe. "It's tough being a girl, isn't it?"

Cody snorted softly. "You're not kidding. Tell me, do girls _ever_ get more than one use out of a pair of pantyhose?" He gestured toward the trash can, and Bailey could see one snagged, stringy, nude-colored nightmare of a nylon leg hanging out of it.

She grinned. "They do get runs in them very easily, don't they? You learn to be careful." The banter was good, she thought. Cody had been such a jerk lately that she'd almost forgotten how funny he could be.

"Bailey..." Cody said quietly, suddenly serious. "About the play. Writing you like that was... was childish, and mean-spirited, and I-"

"Yes, it was." Bailey said evenly, taking a step towards him and cutting him off. "Turn around."

"I... what?" Cody blinked.

"Turn around." Bailey repeated, making a 'circle' gesture with one finger. "I'll unzip you." she reminded him.

"Oh." Cody looked like he was considering whether he should really turn his back on the girl he'd just made so angry, but wisely, he decided to follow her instructions.

She took another step forward and reached out her hand, slowly grasping the top of the dress's back. Her knuckles brushed his warm skin, and she felt his muscles tense slightly beneath her hand. Gripping the zipper with her other hand, she slowly slid it down, down, to where it ended just below the waistband of his jeans, the sides of the dress falling open to reveal his bare back. Releasing the zipper, she let her hand rest on his smooth skin for just a moment before jerking away as if she'd been burned.

What was she _doing_? If there was a situation _less_ romantic than helping your ex-boyfriend out of an evening gown, she couldn't think of it. So the fact that her heart had just started beating double time was _ridiculous_. "Done." she said lightly, stepping away from him.

"Thanks." Cody said in a low voice. He turned back and looked at her awkwardly. "Uh..."

It was Bailey's turn to turn away. It's not like she'd never seen him without a shirt before- he was a boy, for heaven's sake. But somehow, given their situation, it seemed improper that she should watch him getting changed. She heard the rustling of the pink fabric as he stepped out of the dress and laid it on his bed. Then she heard him slip a sweater over his head. "What, no bra you need help with?" she joked weakly.

"I'm not wearing one." Cody answered seriously. "Okay, I'm decent."

When she turned back around, he was putting the dress on a hanger, smoothing wrinkles out of the skirt. She smiled; that was so like him. "I seriously hope that's not going back in your closet."

Cody blushed. "Nah, I'm returning it to London."

Bailey's eyebrows shot up. "Not that you're in any way fat, Cody, but there's no way anything that fits London is going to fit you."

"It's a good thing I'm not a girl, 'cause a comment like that would be murder on my self-esteem." he responded, hanging the dress on the bathroom door. "She said it's one of those things she buys as a favor to the rest of the world, because it's so ugly she doesn't want anyone to have it."

"I don't think it's that ugly..." Bailey said. "Although the girl who was wearing it in the play tonight was a real _dog_."

"Okay, okay." Cody said, holding his hands up in surrender. "I know I made a fool out of myself tonight."

"Oh, Cody..." Bailey sighed. She reached up and removed the barrette from his hair, smoothing his bangs back into their proper place with a touch that was _just_ too clinical to qualify as a caress... but only just. "You were a fool long before tonight."

"I know." Cody admitted. "Like I said, Bailey, I was rude and immature, and I'm sorry."

Bailey nodded. "But... why did you have to vilify me like that? That's not really how you see me, is it?"

"Of course not!" Cody reassured her. "It's just... I still have a lot of hurt feelings from the breakup, and I thought if I wrote something like this, if I blamed the whole thing on you, it would help me get over it. By making you the bad guy I could convince myself that our breakup wasn't my fault, and that I was better off without you."

"The... uh..." Bailey cleared her throat. "The ending. It was..."

Cody ran a hand through his hair. "It didn't work, though." he continued. "Making you the villain didn't make me feel better. It made me feel worse because I knew I was being unfair to you. Real you, in real life." he clarified. "I didn't have time to rewrite the whole play, so I just rewrote the ending. I figured, maybe it would make us both feel better if I put something else in. Something true."

"Something true..." Bailey repeated softly. He looked so miserable that she tried to lighten the mood. "I_ was_ pleasantly surprised when you didn't kill me off in the end!" she joked. The guilty look on his face had her jaw dropping. "You were going to kill me off? You hate me that much?"

"No!" Cody's hand shot out and grabbed one of hers, seemingly of its own accord. Bailey gasped and Cody blushed, but neither teen pulled away. "I wanted to hate you. I wanted you to have done all those awful things, I _wanted_ you to have made out with a mime."

"Yeah, what was _that_, by the way?" Bailey asked, remembering her annoyance at that particular scene of the play. "A _mime_?"

Cody waved her off. "It was a dramatization."

"More like a _trauma_tization." Bailey muttered under her breath. "Seriously." At Cody's _can-we-focus?_ look, she sighed and dropped it. "Fine. So you wanted to hate me."

"But I couldn't." Cody continued, giving her a meaningful look.

The way his eyes were gazing into hers made her feel slightly lightheaded. She bit her lip. "Why not?" she breathed.

His eyes dropped to study the carpet. "Didn't you see the end?" he whispered back.

"Yes." Bailey murmured. "But at the end, you said you..." She couldn't finish. _Still love me._

"No matter how awful I try to convince myself that you are, I can't stop." Cody confessed, still not looking at her. "The breakup wasn't all your fault. A lot of it was mine, and now I know that, and it's getting harder and harder to live with myself."

"Cody, stop." Bailey said softly, sensing that he was on the brink of tears. She squeezed his hand gently. "I never cheated on you, mime or otherwise."

"I know." Cody said. "I don't know how I ever thought you could have."

"I couldn't have." Bailey said. "Because I loved you."

Now a tear did fall from one of his eyes, and she lifted a finger and wiped it away. "I'm so sorry." he whispered.

Bailey blinked and two tears fell from her own eyes. She hadn't even realized she was tearing up. "I thought you were cheating too. I'm as much to blame, and I'm sorry." she answered in a watery voice. He looked up, and as soon as their eyes met, she threw herself into his arms, burying her leaking eyes in his sweater. He clutched her back tightly. "We were both fools." she murmured.

"Yes, we were." Cody agreed, his voice cracking. "But there was one difference. I wrote the play. I was cruel to you."

Bailey snorted a half-laugh, half-sob. "And to Zack. And Woody and Addison, and all those poor suckers in the audience."

"It wasn't a personal attack on them." Cody pointed out seriously, not seeing what she thought was funny. "I wouldn't blame you if you never forgave me."

Bailey pulled out of his arms, wiping her eyes. "You declared your love for me onstage in front of dozens... well, _dozen_... of people. Or at least Zack declared your love for me." she smiled. "Plus you seriously publicly humiliated yourself in that dress. You should get some kind of credit for that."

"Wait, Bailey...You're going to forgive me?" Cody gaped at her.

Bailey shrugged. "I've missed you, Cody... and it's much easier having you on my side than against me."

"I've missed you too." Cody's voice swelled with emotion as he took her hands and squeezed them briefly. "So... we're okay?"

"I think..." Bailey bit her lip. "We're going to be fine." Before she could stop herself, she placed one hand on the side of his face before leaning in and brushing a soft kiss over the other cheek. Her own cheeks turning pink, she beat a hasty retreat for the door.

"Bailey." Cody stopped her with his voice. "You never told me how you felt about me."

She paused in the doorway. "Well..." she said with a warm smile, "If you want to know how I feel, maybe you should ask me out to dinner or something." It felt like the perfect thing to say. They were giving themselves a fresh start.

He evidently agreed. "You're right, of course." he said, tenderness in his voice. "Okay, Bailey. I will."


End file.
